Benji Kurtz is on the side of science. For twenty years he struggled with obesity; he experimented with all kinds of catchy, fad diets that had everything going for them but scientific truth. In "The Plant Advantage," he explains how a movie changed his life, inspiring him to eat the way human beings were designed to eat. And he subsequently lost half his weight, from 260 pounds to 130, in eighteen months. Without struggling.
In his thoughtful and sometimes comic analysis of nutrition and weight-loss, co-written with author Glen Merzer "(Off the Reservation)," Kurtz uses ample scientific...